and "situationally" in this case means "literally while doing anything" because you are always going to be in a state of moving or having just killed something. There's absolutely nothing about it that it's a sidegrade in the slightest sense unless the damage reduction were to be tripled or something.

Boss fights.

If you're reliably finding someone to kill every three turns in a boss fight, lemme know how. Unless you're killing all the bosses in three turns, somehow, at which point you got even better weapon luck on your Cursed than I did, and I think that might be the best weapon luck I've ever gotten.

I suppose you could rack up movement speed and try to intelligently dash around between the enemy's turns to keep up allres, but that's only available either pretty late in the game, or when using Rampage(at which point you should be using your turns hitting people, in general, though I'd imagine there's some exceptions.). I also don't know how well that actually works in practice, either.

3 turns is longer than it really is with rampage.

Also, which boss fights would it matter in? Let's see, going by mid-game:

6) Vor Pride. Well, you're in a pride, and also Vor is going to crap himself the instant you get into melee range because he will explode.

7) Grushnak Pride. Ditto and cursed don't have a hard time with Grushnak.

Gorbat pride. Finally, a boss that can mess you up and is kinda scary in general. Except he summons a lot so anything he decides to drop on your head if you need to back off and heal works out perfectly.

9) Rak'shor pride. Also pretty self-explanatory what with the necros everywhere.

10) Eruan/Charred Scar... well, who cares.

11) High Peak. Targets abound, don't have to fight stair bosses (and regardless of whether you do or don't your investment or lack of investment into curses won't make or break the fight if a fight isn't perfectly set up to make use of shrouds).

12) Elendar/Argoniel. Cursed thrash them pretty easily nowadays so it's mostly moot but I guess if you were super worried you could leave an easier portal open? And if your gear is bad then you'll spend enough time dancing around the top/bottom pillars for the extra resists anyway while stalling to heal or movement/rampage across the room.

Basically, boss fights would be a much more pressing point if cursed didn't basically style on 99% of them and some of them involve movement anyway (vor deciding he doesn't want any of the crazy screaming dude's crap and backing away, ditto rak'shor, grushnak's knockback, repositioning during Gorbat if he decides to manhandle you, Elendar's knockback if he gets coy as well as his habit of running away because he also is not down with the crazy screaming dude, etcetc) so you tend to constantly be benefiting from at least half of shrouds as it is.

I've been playing with Cursed Aura on a new build, and I can definitely see the appeal. There are a few things I didn't get before:

1) With a 5/4/x/x build, you're taking advantage of multiple curses at once, without having to be as fiddly with equipment (just put the +2 any curse onto Shrouds, and let the others sort themselves out)2) The benefits scale (although I'm not sure exactly what they're scaling with: tree mastery? talent level of either ability? curse level?)....I can definitely see Cursed Aura as being a good choice now, although I still think it trails Fungal and some racials, and I still think it's probably not the best choice for one's first Cursed playthrough.

EDIT: Checked the scaling. Scales with number of cursed items, not with talent level or tree mastery. Up to a limit of 5, but it's interesting that even the Shrouds resist all scales up a bit. Penalties scale up too, though. Here's max return for curses:

Can someone explain how the "release your hate" on a weapon works? For example I start a level 1 cursed and come across a longsword on the ground. If I "release my hate" I lose 2 WP and the longsword is cursed. Now I do this with 4 other iron daggers that I find. So do I have to carry around these 5 cursed weapons for the rest of the game to get the scaling mentioned above? Does it matter if I actually wield these weapons or do they just have to be in my inventory? Can I continue to curse other weapons up to level 50 and would I even want to?

Once you "release your hate" the first time, it curses the weapon and all weapons in your inventory, and gives you one point in Cursed Aura. That one point in Cursed Aura makes it so that every weapon you pick up gets a random curse. You get more points in Cursed Aura, and it affects items of more inventory slots. You don't get a choice about whether things get cursed or not-- if they can get cursed, they get cursed. So, no, you don't save the early cursed equipment.

You get a sort of "curse point" for every cursed item wielded/worn. Having them in your inventory doesn't do anything.

Does that clear things up? You could always try to make a Dark Aura cursed, or even cheat one.

If you're going antimagic, then you'll have plenty of things to spend generics on. The Dark Gifts can be pretty nice if you use them properly (read: Shrouds. Lots of Shrouds), but it's by no means necessary.

After playing quite a bit more, I've made a guide aimed at players new to the class and relatively new to the game. It has some slightly different recommendations than belmarduk's leading post. It's what I would have wanted to know when I began, and is available at http://te4.org/blogs/nate/2013/03/afflicted/your-first-cursed.

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